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Justin Brady: Real Iowa’s real talk, no drama. I’m Justin Brady from the JETRO Barbecue Studio. Did you know podcasts now are more popular than radio? That’s right. We are kicking radio’s butt. And Fascinating local paper in Northwestern Iowa’s, taking this very seriously, doubling down on podcasts. Even before they went Digital on their own website. I don’t even know if you have a Website. Is that correct?

Erin Sommers: we do not have a website In theory, a website within the next few months, but we can talk about that in a journey.

Justin Brady: So joining us, is Aaron Summers, the news editor of the Pocahontas Record Democrat. I actually met you last year ’cause I Came up there to do a podcasting talk and strategy talk, and so someone took that to heart. and

Erin Sommers: Yes, we did It took us a year, but we got it going

Justin Brady: actually. It’s pretty fast. You guys are pretty fast. Uh, we’re gonna talk about podcasting. We’re gonna talk about local news. We’re gonna talk about adopting podcasting. and why podcasting is kicking radio’s butt right now according to et. Edison Research, I think that was in. But before we do that this is the Jethro’s Barbecue Studio And if you like chicken wings as much as I do, go to Iowa podcast.com. Scroll to the top, you click that little banner with Jethro, he’s holding a $30 gift card If you click that and buy a hundred dollars gift card they’ll give you a $30 gift card as a bonus. Let’s start with print. Only, Um, why are we still print? I mean, you’re, you’re doing podcasts, you’ve seen some crazy growth there. Um, Maybe you feel like you’re a small, town, but you’re actually a, first mover in this. you’re actually like way ahead of the curve on this, but, so we’re gonna talk about all that and why you’re going podcasting, but why print only? still.

Erin Sommers: Well, for one, our demographic Northwestern Iowa. I think Pocahontas is the sixth oldest county in the state of Iowa. If I, if

Justin Brady: sixth, old, like demographics. Demographics. Okay.

Erin Sommers: Yeah. Um. So we have a lot of people who just want a newspaper in their Um, the other thing, it’s just really been a challenge. A website is expensive to get started. We have very, very slim margins. you know, a newspaper makes its money, not on its subscriptions, but on ads. And we have some really great advertisers in Pocahontas County, everybody else. Their prices have gone up the last few years and, um, they just have a really hard time putting in an, you know, you used to have two car dealerships in a small town and both would advertise their car sales every week. We have two car dealerships. They’re less frequent in their advertising. there’s just so many other ways for people to advertise, which is why we have, I have been bothering my boss, um, the owner of the newspaper since I started there seven years ago. We really need We really need a website. Some of her other publications have a website. um, we’ve just really struggled in the last couple months. She said, let’s do it. The first contractor that she worked with had put together some other papers. He just didn’t get back to us. We tried a couple other people. They said, interested. Didn’t get back to us. And then we found another person. He started working on it, we’re not sure that we’re real excited about how it looks, and suddenly the first guy is available again. just it’s just been really it’s much harder, um, than I realized it would be to get a website up and running. Um, the other, to, we, we recently hired a digital marketing editor and, um, his whole goal is to, was to get us our podcast. Get sponsorships on a podcast and then and running so we can sell digital advertising. We do have businesses in town that are really excited to be advertising online. We just need to have that website going. The I’ll say about print, um, there’s a couple things that are really important about print in Iowa. All. Cities, schools, counties have to publish, um, their meeting minutes, their budgets, like they’re legally required to print those. We can’t just put those on a digital edition That has to be in a hard copy of a newspaper. So that’s why you

Justin Brady: Is that like a legal

Erin Sommers: is that like a legal thing? It’s a legal requirement right now. years, including this year, the um, and house bring up a saying, Hey, of that requirement. A couple of years ago, our state senator in northwestern Iowa said it would stay save municipalities about $11 million a year. I did the math. That’s $3 per Iowan per year to are copy and they can’t be changed because you can to the internet. And someone can go back and change those

Justin Brady: Yeah, A stealth edit

Erin Sommers: A stealth edit. So, um, and we do have people who read the meeting minutes when we miss stuff, people call the paper. Our county auditor tells me that she has people read the board of supervisors minutes week. Um, so we still that wants to read that hand. Um, you know, and you can take it you can cut it out. away and it doesn’t

Justin Brady: Mm. Mm-hmm. so that’s

Erin Sommers: why, I’m also just a really firm believer in having a hard copy, historical record. You here we are in Northwestern Iowa and this kind of leads into what excited me about the podcast can. You can pick up the paper a hundred years from now and see life was like in Pocahontas Mm-hmm Um, a filter I mean I guess I’m a filter. We’re all a filter. Um, but I can pick up the newspaper from a hundred years ago and am delighted every time so that I had all, I spent a reading old excerpts from the newspapers to coworkers. I do my like old timey radio announcer voice and we just get a real kick out of it. But a couple ago, we were still talking about what to do for a podcast and I was like, I really wanna just read from old newspapers and I want people to read or to what people were like. They are much Oh, there’s so much snark.

Justin Brady: older. Wait, older Iowa newspapers. are more snarky.

Erin Sommers: Oh, snarky. What is that?

Justin Brady: What? Why is that?

Erin Sommers: They had different rules about how on much juer. Yeah. So if you go listen to our episode, so, um, found, I, I literally just randomly picked a date in February, 1926. I said, it’s February, 2026. Let’s go back a hundred years. And I picked a date. And on the front page of the newspaper, here is the headline, poison Manson Man. And was like, what? face you’re making that made. And I was like, what is going on here? And so it’s this drawn out story, and it’s not how I would write a story right now. direct quotes. It’s not so-and-so said. our Manson reporter got this information. This guy from Manson went to Palmer, which is in Pocahontas County. Manson’s in Calhoun County. They’re just kind of 15 minutes from each other across the county line. He went to an auction. When the auction was over, he wanted to stay in Palmer. Now remember it’s prohibition. So he had a place where he could get illegal booze Sure

Justin Brady: course. And

Erin Sommers: his family went back to Manson. He’s drinking. Um, you know, so he, how does this go? Sorry. It’s been a couple weeks, and I don’t have all the, the details exactly straight, but he hitches a ride with a traveling salesman from Palmer back to Manson. He passes out in the back of the car. The guy can’t get him to wake up, so he leaves him in the car overnight in February. Guy comes back downstairs the next morning from the hotel, the guy, like, this guy, this drunk guy, never went home. So he is like, well, he must be from Palmer. So he drives him back to Palmer. Then they realize he is dead. then there are two inquests that happen and he has bruises on his hand and a concussion probably. But both coroner inquests determined that he died of bad alcohol, Um, and it was not and the some like in there too, but the way they wrote it was just, I wish I, I should have brought it so I could have read you some. I didn’t even think of that, should listen to the podcast. It’s episode two. Um, and it. It’s just, I read it to my

Justin Brady: We’ll make sure to link that, by the way, in the show notes for those

Erin Sommers: but yeah like those old papers, they just, they had such a different style of writing. Somebody just asked me the other day, he was reading from old Des Moines registers. He wrote a book about Babe Ruth and he read this really fabulous quote, babe Ruth and um. Somebody else, I’m not a baseball person, I apologize. 1922 on one of their barnstorming tours and this guy a, hit the ball so out into the field that he had rounded third base and was back in the bullpen before the sphere even made it back to third or

Justin Brady: That’s, yeah, it

Erin Sommers: was just it’s really beautiful

Justin Brady: Kind of fun. More fun. Not as

Erin Sommers: Yeah. and I, I’ve, I sat after this. could you write stories like that? I sat down and tried and I don’t think I have that skill.

Justin Brady: That’s interesting. Yeah, Huh. well, yeah, you wonder what changed? What, what? What I wanna know though, is what was the change for the podcast? You mentioned earlier here, a Pocahontas record, Democrat, you have a podcast now and you’ve been only print for years. So what was that thing that that got everybody convinced, to go all in on. this podcast project?

Erin Sommers: Well, you came to visit, which helped, and you made it sound l of task than I thought it would be. Um, the other thing was we just looked around the community and we looked at our ad sales and said, what can we do to reach more people? I am in my mid forties. kids in school, so a newspaper because their kid, the kids’ activities show up. I have a high schooler this year. My oldest is in high school, so his jazz band and his academic decathlon and hi, uh, what’s, um, he’s in the play this week. His picture will show up in the paper. So I live Rockwell City. I work in Pocahontas, so I the paper that covers Calhoun County. cause I want pictures of my kid. Yeah. You know, save that. So we found that people don’t tend to pick up the newspaper until their kids show up in the paper. Interesting. Um, mm-hmm. We we wanted, we wanted something that drives traffic both ways. So the format of the podcast is, every Monday I record five to seven minutes of here’s what’s in the paper, but I’m not reading it. I try to give you something that didn’t make it into the Sure. a anecdote. You know, I took pictures at the swing show, dress rehearsal, and I talked about how one of the performers he gets up there, he’s, he’s doing a solo, he’s playing guitar. He’s actually a folk music singer who travels around Iowa in the summer. He’s really, really good. Um. And you could just tell performer he was because his mic went dead. And instead like being weird he kept strumming on the guitar and singing about how his mic didn’t work and so I mentioned that. in the Podcast. It doesn’t really go with the pictures, you know, I don’t have to write about it in the story, it’s the kind of thing people like that behind the scenes stuff. So I’m trying to incorporate that. Not sound like I’m somebody on the radio reading the news, I still get that voice sometimes, and I try really hard not to. It’s just. It’s the thing you you lis I, we listen to the radio the office. I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I have to remind myself, just talk normal Aaron. Don’t read Just talk normal. Um, so we are hoping people hear that. Pick up the Sure. We’re hoping up the newspaper,

Justin Brady: and hear the podcast and

Erin Sommers: listen to podcast. We’re hoping once we have linking everything to the website and we’re getting traffic then our will see the value, um, in. Picking up or advertising in the paper.

Justin Brady: So the, Pocahontas record Democrat. Then do you have advertiser interest on the podcast? Because it goes without saying everybody. but if you don’t have advertisers, you don’t have a newspaper. So are the advertisers really interested in this.

Erin Sommers: Yes. And we’re not charging enough right now, but we’re doing, right now, we’re doing monthly sponsors and I think we’re booked through July. And we, we that in July we’ll probably raise the rate a little bit, but first we wanted to prove that we could it right. Um, give a shout out right here. We, my boss, um, agreed to hire a digital marketing person mm-hmm. For a couple months and kind of gave him some goals. Which are reliant upon us getting the website up and running. Um, but he graduated from Iowa State in December. He grew up in, well, he Pomeroy, which is in Calhoun County, but he went to Pocahontas area Community School. So he’s a local kid, he’s an adult. I should not call him a kid. Um, and he’s just Like we have just put him in charge of our social media. He, he’s gotten. I don’t know, a thousand more likes to our page or so like we have more Yeah. Um, the month of the podcast, we were sponsored by the hospital and so I sat down the, the first week of the month I sit down with our sponsor and just interview them, tell me something new, what’s going on that because the hospital shared it and because he’s just a really great community supporter. I think we had more than 300 views on our first episode. Wow. It dropped

Justin Brady: goodness. Um,

Erin Sommers: for the month, we’ve been between 60 and 70 on YouTube. Um. And I just yesterday sat down with our April sponsor. She’s a real estate agent. Um, it was a really fun interview. I got to ask her. I basically took conversations we’ve had over the last year about real estate in Pocahontas County and said, tell me about this. Tell me about this. You know, she sells houses to people from outstate, site unseen who can work. And they moved to Rolf and Palmer and Pocahontas and Lorenz, and some of them even stay. So, you know, it’s just. It’s a, not a big market, but it is something that happens. so we talked about that. I thought that was really

Justin Brady: does the, uh, Pocahontas record Democrats serve then, not just Pocahontas, but like Rockwell City, what’s your

Erin Sommers: So we all of Pocahontas

Justin Brady: Yeah.

Erin Sommers: and then. I will cover things in Pomeroy because they’re part of school district.

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm.

Erin Sommers: Um, we also have the Loren Sun, which is a tabloid size, so we’re called broadsheet. We are It takes two it when you open actually had people complain as they get older, they find it too big

Justin Brady: and

Erin Sommers: and unwieldy to hold,

Justin Brady: if you shrink it, some other old People are going to say like, oh, the, ti it’s, it’s just too small. I

Erin Sommers: actually get that too. Um, I think we use nine I think it’s plenty big right now, but I, I get it. Um, and so we have the Loren Sun, which really just covered like Lorenz. And then we also have the Buna Vista County Journal, which covers the Newell Fonda School District. Um, and honestly, I don’t get as often as I should, but whenever someone over there calls me, I’m happy to run over and cover something. And we real distinct pleasure of covering the Newell Fonda girls basketball team all season. So, you know, we got to go down to state and go, but a couple of my co coworkers went and took pictures at the basketball tournament and were there when they won State. This is their fourth title since I’ve worked at the paper in seven years. So

Justin Brady: it’s, it’s really cool. that the local brands in Pocahontas County are interested in digital advertising.

Erin Sommers: Oh, absolutely.

Justin Brady: the podcast, like that’s pretty frigging

Erin Sommers: We were nervous. I was not sure people would feel about it. Um, we’ve. a lot of groups. It’s been two businesses and then one nonprofit group. Uh, March was sponsored by the, uh, Pocahontas area community Fine Arts boosters because the month of March, there’s the spring play, the swing show, and the mock trial team has their competition to see if they can qualify for state So it’s a Really fine arts month, and so we were able to put the spotlight on fine arts. This month, which is fun. All of us in the office were fine arts kids. I know that will come as a shock to no one that, you know, the kids who liked theater and music and, and debate sorts of things end up in a newspaper where we get to write and be creative. Um. Yeah So that was that was, fun. We interviewed a bunch of students and then the, for the podcast, which just posted yesterday, um, we strong armed a couple high school girls to come in, come into the office, and excerpts from the 1920s and 1930s about fine arts on in Pocahontas County. And then I found poems written by high school sophomores, and I read the high school sophomores poems for the podcast. Um, cute.

Justin Brady: Yeah.

Erin Sommers: was a good time. So

Justin Brady: you have a conversation? then? Uh, you, they, it sounds like the owner of the paper hired a digital marketing person, and did you have a conversation about like real numbers? Because I feel like a lot of people, struggle to start a podcast because they have this really dumb goal and they’re like, oh, I don’t know if we’re ever, gonna be like Rogan or. Like Andrew Huber mean, we’re never gonna get millions of subscribers, therefore we shouldn’t start one. And I’m like, what is, what? how is, how did that become the. metric of success Is Well, unless we’re a Top 10

Erin Sommers: Oh, no, I have

Justin Brady: did you guys have a realistic discussion? of how many numbers would be worth it for your advertisers and for you?

Erin Sommers: No, to try it happened. Um, and I feel like 70 to a views per week feels pretty good right now for a community of 7,000 people. Uhhuh. Um, know one is my mom in Indiana every week listening to it,

Justin Brady: of course.

Erin Sommers: uh, we a conversation about how much money can we make off of this. Yeah, which we, and we don’t, I, there are some goals that’s kinda between my boss and our digital marketing guy. I just kind leave, stay outta that. Um, try to stay out of it as much as I can. I’m not in the newspaper business to make money, but, um, fun. It’s like the best job. And uh yeah I I, to see what would happen. We figure we’ll try it and if it if it up expensive or if it doesn’t work out well, then we and we learned something. Um. I, I have had few people tell me, um, they’re listening to it every week. They, they like how I sound on the radio, which thank goodness. ’cause I can’t listen to myself when I’m recorded. I,

Justin Brady: weird,

Erin Sommers: it sounds weird. It sounds so weird. Um. But it was more like, let’s try this and see what happens. Right? Um, we probably should have had some more specific goals, but we figured, what the heck? Let’s just, let’s and see. Um, and it’s been really fun. More work than I anticipated. I mean, it shouldn’t, it doesn’t take that long ever to put together my, this is what’s in the news script. I think my bigger problem is I start going through the old newspapers and I just get so distracted reading that I don’t the do is I, I find something really interesting, but then I need to Google to learn more. Yeah, So I

Justin Brady: You start to like, peel back layers of the onion and you’re like, Ooh, there’s A lot here. that I didn’t think. Yeah. Like the, the podcasting only, I don’t know, I don’t know if you’d agree with this or not. Like only maybe 5%, maybe 10. definitely 10% or. less is the actual recording of it. Right. right. Like everyone thinks like that’s the 90%. And if you can just get the equipment. and start recording, you’re pretty much there. That’s like 5%. The rest is prep. is research is even scheduling people to be on the show is, is a challenge.

Erin Sommers: then, um, you know, Eric sits down. Eric Gerde is our digital editor, and he, he records everything. And right now he’s just doing it on his phone. We do have some new equipment coming in soon. Uh, but he records it and he’ll, I mean, he’s gotta, even it’s camera and two there’s still He’s gotta music needs to get the thumbnails and he needs to the, make the And he is busy. And again, he does a great job. Um. But it just takes time and I’m glad he’s doing it. Like I had really wanted to do this and I didn’t realize how much. went into it until I started watching Eric do it. Um, and so it’s been, it’s been eye-opening.

Justin Brady: it is fascinating that you say um, the, the whole You Went podcast before you went website thing is absolutely fascinating. and for, for, for, anyone who has never tried. to build a website, your descriptor or your Explanation of how that works is like dead on. because it is the Wild in web developer land. And you can ask one person, do you know how to code all the things? And they’ll be like, of course And then you get into it, they’re like, well, only, I actually only know Java, or I only know this thing. Or it’s like, you can’t get ’em to return. It’s, it’s a complete disaster. And So what’s interesting is you couldn’t figure out the web stuff because it’s just so. complicated. But the Podcast tools are readily available, now, right? Anybody can start a podcast out of their garage in seconds.

Erin Sommers: mean, we’re literally using an iPhone, an iPad, and some clip-on mics with a piece that clips into his phone or the iPad to catch the sound and. much like, I’d like a really fancy studio or whatever. Those mics work really great. I mean, for what we’re doing. you know, actually yesterday when we recorded at the real estate office, which is one door down from us, um, she has a really cute little like living room set up and he said. Katie, can we just record in here Because it was just really cute and had really good lighting. We like, sure, if you want to. Uh, but we’ve talked about a couple different things. We a of the basement where old newspapers are stored. Have copies of

Justin Brady: I don’t know. Uh, it’s probably something I’ve seen, but I don’t know what you’re

Erin Sommers: So think of a broad sheet newspaper. Mm-hmm. Think of a hard, hard bound, like hard cover Usually they’re black or red whatever color your, your newspaper theme is. And so they’re like this and they’re about oh three, two to three inches And it’s year’s worth of newspapers bound together. We have in our basement and we kind of cool. it’s so We’re like,

Justin Brady: Oh,

Erin Sommers: just, good idea. Make the

Justin Brady: The

Erin Sommers: and have those bound copies behind us.

Justin Brady: have nice soft lighting at ’em a little. That’s cool. Uh, it used to be and so this is the thing is any small town can do this. Yes. Like Really easily uh, as you correctly illustrate the, it, I mean, I’ve been podcasting now for various, uh, projects, various podcasts for over a decade. Okay. And it used to be everybody, so. Hard. The, the, The equipment was extremely, expensive. Uploading. You had to have a web, I mean. there it was so. Crazy complicated. Yeah. And now, like you said, you can start a podcast with just a phone you don’t even need mics. Now, obviously it’s not gonna be as good, right? But, you know, you can do improvements, um, but you can start a podcast with a flipping phone, not a flip phone, but a freaking phone. Uh, and then you can really get some pretty good, lighting and pretty good audio quite, it’s quite inexpensive to do these days. Now, obviously, I always. encourage people do the polish where you can, But you know, just using even even sound treated rooms, something in the basement, all these things are really, really cool. Uh, what are the recommendations then? Of other small towns across, the state of Iowa that are looking for new revenue opportunities and new ways to connect with the local community. ’cause this is a great way. Yeah. the Digital distribution, everybody has a phone now. Yes. Like everybody has a phone. It doesn’t matter how rural you are, you have a freaking phone. so what are the recommendations? for all these small towns Throughout the state that are like, yeah, we should totally be doing this?

Erin Sommers: well, the other thing we’re looking at is trying to play up that we have a print product. I, I’ve listened to a couple podcasts where they’ve talked about how people feel so tied to their phones and so tied to their devices that they are stepping back. who was I can’t remember, it’s some kind of phone. It kind of a smartphone, but. it, doesn’t do of the things so that you’re not a, you know, you’re not so addicted to it. I actually know a guy in Pocahontas who switched to a flip phone, um, who said you

Justin Brady: like light phone and minimal Phone. and

Erin Sommers: we’ve talked about, um, and. The problem with being in a small newspaper is there’s always something else to do. So idea for about four months and we haven’t implemented it yet, but I’d like to go back to having a crossword and a Sudoku a kid’s page in the and maybe even, um, there’s an author who lives in Loren and I wanna talk to her. I, I’ve mentioned it to her once, and we need to. Kind of work together having a serial story. So in 1900, if you picked up the Pocahontas record Democrat on the front page, three top to bottom were fiction from some well-known author. Yeah. They just ran, They ran serialized stories could pick it up and read a book every week. Yeah. And what can we do that parents who want to get their kids off their phones. What give them? That is an activity every week that we could do together as a family or you know, the crossword. I know of people who love to do the crossword. I do wordle on my phone every morning, you know, what can we Times has made a lot of money, from what I understand on their game subscriptions. Huh. Um,

Justin Brady: a good point.

Erin Sommers: Uh so do that gets people off their phone? We’re phone.. We’re a print product. So we’ve We just need, again, to find the sponsors and figure out what do. We just. That. I just wanna kind of play on that idea of like, let’s put our phone down and be a little more analog again, mean that’s our are an analog, uh, I don’t even know the word, but That’s what we

Justin Brady: So I mean, what’s the recommendation then for other small towns and small papers wanting to start? This is it’s be careful how you roll it out. You don’t want to like cannibalize your own product or, or make sure to use it as an asset, um, to push print, because people still do love print, and I will say from a personal. experience, um. I do a ton of research and prep for this show And other projects I work on, and I have a road, well you can see it, right here actually, I can just hold it up the camera for those who are, uh, watching, but it’s a ein thing you can Scribble on. and so I don’t like reading on screens. I detest that experience. I Like I don’t read long form on my phone. Like There are tons of people reading long form. on their phone. I’m like, I don’t know how you do that. It like hurts my eyes. So I love the print. experience. I always choose print and for digital things that there is no print option. I use this thing. Which is simulating print. So is the advice for smaller towns. like, Hey, you don’t Have to do either or. you can use the Podcast as a great Compliment to the paper.

Erin Sommers: Yes. think the other thing is just figure out something that you need to enjoy. not necessarily, like, I thought lot of different things. I thought could I take my camera to every interview that I do and pro?

Justin Brady: Oh, interesting.

Erin Sommers: Um, but honestly That felt like a lot. I was not gonna have the passion for that. lot, a lot of my interviews end up over email ’cause people are busy or I over the phone. I was like, this doesn’t necessarily work because of we’re out in the middle of But to call up and interview an who’s coming to town and tell them about, tell everybody their book, right? So that they go to the library and hear the author speak. So. thought about, um, what it was Hey, I found this old thing in the old paper. Let me it. And my always got such a, such a of it that I thought, this We need to talk about the paper and what’s in the paper because I want people who aren’t reading the paper to know there’s really good stuff in the paper. Yeah. The like, if people the paper, I want them to try something new. And I, again, I said, Hey, our demographic is a lot of people who are over 60, enjoy the history, uh, stuff that I pull out about Pocahontas County. Um, I. I I know some folks at another newspaper that heard that we were do doing a podcast and they said, we wanna do one too. So they went to like chat GPT and said, what podcast ideas for a small town paper? And I just, thought, I mean, that’s not a bad place to start. And we did use chat, GPT to help us come up with the name of the podcast because we were kind of at a creative slump. And then, um, it things and then we riffed on it a little bit. think don’t just pick something because it comes up as an option. Pick something you’re interested in. Yeah,

Justin Brady: Yeah, because

Erin Sommers: like it’s gonna show when I have a story that I’m not interested in, it becomes a very boring story. I work for a small town newspaper. I go to meetings two or three times a week. I try hard to make them interesting meeting stories. They need to be in the paper. Sometimes they’re not very interesting. I want to talk the I every week. There’s so much better stuff.

Justin Brady: What I, What I love about this is, that a lot of people view AI and technology in these vast, modern things as disruptors to older school technologies. Like printed paper. yeah, For example, But that’s not what’s happening. It doesn’t look like that, and I don’t think that’s going to happen at scale either, but I would imagine, I don’t know if. you’ve experimented with this, but I would imagine smaller towns with limit more limited resources, you have less reach. the adver and Because you have less reach. the advertisers aren’t paying as much and because they’re not paying as much it’s a smaller paper, but. I would imagine that as more tools like this become available and as you guys start using like call Claude code to develop things, I would imagine you can have a bigger presence with the same. amount of resources you have now. So have, you, have you, uh, at the paper looked at like using AI tools to Develop the website and create this. stuff?

Erin Sommers: have not looked at that. Um, we have, I, I, went to the Iowa Newspaper Associations convention a couple years ago. They have a conference in February every year. And I went to, um, they have different classes, seminars, and there was a college professor there talking about, um, using. Large language models to write your stories. Yeah. said a computer’s never going to replace a great reporter. Correct. But replace a mediocre one. Good.

Justin Brady: mediocre Good.

Erin Sommers: Um, and he and I, and then I’ve tried it, you can take your legal meeting minutes and feed into chat. GBT. ’cause it was there it comes He said, you can tell it, you know, um, don’t print it in order. Write me a news story in Associated Press style that from most important to least important. Yeah. And. Did, did a decent job. Sure. fair, at the legal mini meeting minutes and just write stories out of those. Either if I don’t go and I feel like it needs to be followed up on, I’m gonna call your city clerk, or I’m gonna call your mayor, or at least shoot them a text. It’s, it’s 2026. I will probably shoot them a text and let them know, if there’s or not, or if they wanna make a comment, um, at least get the conversation started like that. But. There. I, I am sure there are papers in the state of Iowa right now who are running those meeting minutes through some sort of AI and getting you a byline free news story. Yeah.

Justin Brady: and why wouldn’t you though, right? Because to a point, some of the, um, some of the, the news articles we read are just kind of data dumps anyway, and like you kind of mentioned you’re like, some of this stuff has to be reported on from a legal perspective or because that’s our job. But at the same time. we Know that It’s not interesting. Like I can’t write this narrative about, this and make this compelling story. So in those cases, I have zero, like not one person I have zero problems with having an AI do that So that the real reporters can focus on the real. Stories. Yeah. Like that, you know, that stuff is, I think that’s gonna be incredible for smaller newsrooms, have AI do this stuff that has to be done. And then have the reporters now like you That have the time. to go to the people and talk about the really, really cool stories that the AI can’t do. Yes. Right. And so that, I think it’s going to and I think we’re seeing it now. with your paper, the record Democrat in Pocahontas. I think you’re starting to see technology free you up to be able to focus on the actual stories that matter to people in the

Erin Sommers: Yes. Yes. heard about, I think it was the Cleveland plane dealer. They ran a new advertisement for new, new, new reporters, maybe the, it’s in the last two months. And it said very specifically, you, we want to hire you. You will do no writing. We want you out on the street talking to people. You will submit notes and we will run them all, and then editors will take it from there. I, you know, and as I’ve been a reporter for. Almost 30 years I started in high school. like to me, have some apprehension about the whole thing. Like, I and I don’t wanna see my job go away, but mediocre reporter so I feel like I’m probably okay Um, but it’s funny, I was just listening to a podcast on my drive down here about driverless cars and they started with I have written a column about this before, you know, there used to be knocker uppers. Do you know what knocker uppers were? No. Um, so before there were alarm clocks, there were people who would sleep during the day and wake up at night, and they would have the big stick and knock on your window to wake you up. because There were no alarm clocks. knocker uppers, unless you count me shaking my teenager awake in morning. But, um, I I just Um, but like there jobs go away.

Justin Brady: Yeah.

Erin Sommers: And I you know and it was really it. I think it’s a se it’s a couple part series, so I’m only to the first one so far, apprehensive about driverless cars having listened to this reporting, which is very like straightforward from someone who is very distrustful of tech in a lot of ways. Um, so that’s been Really interesting. Yeah.

Justin Brady: jobs, in job descriptions go away, but opportunities multiply right? Is generally how things work. Like Yeah. Sure. Like, uh, the, the automobile disrupted certain, like a horseless carriage Operations. Yeah. However, the automobile opened up interstate commerce and hundreds of billions of jobs that we could have never conceived of, And not to mention jobs. that were more enjoyable. And So I think we’re just, you know, we’re obviously, that’s what all this new technology does, but Aaron Summers the news editor of the Pocahontas Record Democrat. What is, what’s the easiest way to get to the podcast and subscribe to it?

Erin Sommers: I would say go to our Facebook page, look for the record Democrat, and we have links to YouTube and Spotify. Um, we also have an Instagram. You can find it all through our Facebook page. Um, we update. Pretty The podcast comes out once a week, usually on Wednesdays, unless we ask Eric to do too much that week, and then it might show up on Thursday. Um, really have, I didn’t realize how much digital stuff we could and should be doing mm-hmm.

Justin Brady: mm-hmm. Until

Erin Sommers: got him there, and it’s just been incredible. Um, and the really excited about it. But yes, you can find us at the record. Democrat. Um, Facebook does not like the word Pocahontas. So when Pocahontas get. It us it thinks it might be a slur. really Yes.

Justin Brady: my

Erin Sommers: So I know I discovered that when I went to create our Facebook page seven years ago and it kept it. So you will find Pocahontas businesses where say like Pocahontas County is one word, or pokey A of people in Pocahontas call stuff

Justin Brady: pokey. That is super

Erin Sommers: Um, so we are the record Democrat.

Justin Brady: Well, we’ll tell Mark Zuckerberg to work on that. Aaron Summers the news editor, of The Pocahontas Record Democrat, or the pokey record. Democrat, thank you so much for coming on the Iowa

Erin Sommers: you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.